At the IBX Purchasing Executive Summit earlier this week many wise words were spoken, but in retrospect the words that linger I my mind and won’t go away came from Gerold Carl, the Director Strategic ePurchasing at Lufthansa.
When describing the lessons learned from the very impressive Lufthansa e-procurement initiative (more on which can be learned in this Efficient Purchasing interview) he noted that end-users were reluctant to go for e-learning often pushing for the more costly in-person training approach. When asked why he thought this might be he matter-of-factly nailed answer:
“…our end-users were expecting somthing like Amazon.com, we gave them SAP…”
It just goes to show how important user-friendliness is, and how rapid e-procurement providers need to be in adapting B2C-like user experiences. If e-procurement providers can’t deliver up to those expectations, customers are no doubt heading down a path of costly training, change managment, information and expectation management.
